Wes Streeting takes his networking seriously – to such a degree that the hard-partying Health Secretary has become known as ‘all-night Wes’.
‘He does have a slight tendency to be swept up with the bottles at the end of parties,’ is how one wry Westminster observer puts it. At Labour’s party conference in Liverpool this year, the Health Secretary was still propping up hotel bars at 4am before reappearing – as bright-eyed and puppy-doggish as ever – on the breakfast circuit three hours later.
That was not an isolated occasion; a daily audit of party attendances run by the Westminster website Politico is very Wes-heavy, with the 41-year-old Cabinet Minister frequently recorded as being at multiple, simultaneous events. And all this with a crisis-hit NHS to run.
Streeting’s conspicuous energy contrasts with the weary-looking Prime Minister – more than two decades older and in the throes of a steep decline in popularity.
The ‘optics’, as Westminster likes to term it, are that Streeting – long regarded as a future party leader – ‘smells blood’. His public opposition to the assisted dying Bill last month did not exactly dispel this impression; nor did his intervention last week when he openly lamented the UK’s failure in 2013 to take military action against Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad – even though then Labour leader Ed Miliband had ordered his MPs to oppose it.
Streeting’s allies dismiss any suggestion that he is ‘on manoeuvres’, pointing out the scale of the landslide achieved by Starmer just five months ago. They attribute his energy and high public profile to his brush with kidney cancer three years ago and a desire to carpe diem.
His growing confidence comes in part from the calibre of his ‘back team’ – Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson are both long-standing supporters. This might help to explain why he looks so comfortable in Tory circles, such as last week’s Christmas drinks held by the Tory bible The Spectator – now edited by Michael Gove – where he was treated as the effective guest of honour.
At the magazine’s parliamentary awards earlier this month, he prompted roars of laughter by joking about his ‘Right-wing’ beliefs before launching a barrage of barbs against his colleagues: ‘The Deputy Prime Minister is here,’ he said, in front of the official holder of that title, Angela Rayner, before adding: ‘Good to see you, Pat.’
Cabinet Office Minister Pat McFadden is regarded by many as Starmer’s real deputy.
And about Louise Haigh, who was forced to resign as Transport Secretary over a fraud conviction for a mobile phone she said was stolen, he said: ‘For the record, I love Louise. She is a good friend. I genuinely want to see her back in the Government soon and I’m going to phone her tomorrow on one of her numbers.’
All this showmanship comes as members of the Cabinet are now unguardedly describing Sir Keir as a ‘dud’, with growing talk that he will not last until the next Election.
Ministers who complained that the PM was becoming ‘never here Keir’ as a result of his frequent globetrotting had been reassured that he would switch focus to tackle his mounting domestic problems, spinning out from a disastrous Budget which has united taxed farmers and freezing pensioners in fury.
However, he is off again tonight – this time heading to Norway and Estonia to talk tough about Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
Insiders grumble about the lack of a ‘vision’ to sell to voters.
One Downing Street official said: ‘Keir is like Rishi Sunak in this respect. He doesn’t see the importance of telling a story. He thinks it should be enough to work hard and focus on doing a good job. But that’s not how politics works. It may seem trivial, but you need to have a narrative. Blair got that.’
Wes Streeting’s conspicuous energy contrasts with the weary-looking Prime Minister
Few ministers are anywhere near the decision-making centre, which is being very tightly controlled by the Prime Minister, his chief of staff Morgan McSweeney and a handful of confidants.
One downcast senior Labour MP said: ‘I don’t even know who is in the tent, never mind get to speak to them.’
Streeting’s roots in the party are deeper than Sir Keir, who was parachuted in to Labour just before the 2015 Election as a pre-packed leader-in-waiting to take on the Left. ‘The basic problem is that Starmer was never supposed to be PM in the first place,’ said one Labour insider.
‘He was supposed to be our Moses – to get us near as possible to the Promised Land but not actually into Government.
‘That’s what Morgan McSweeney and the modernisers thought. They saw him as the man to clean up the mess left by Jeremy Corbyn and the Hard Left.’
In that scenario, Streeting was scripted to take over and lead Labour back into power.
According to one seasoned Labour backbencher: ‘The modernisers are frustrated. Their dilemma is that they are responsible for parachuting a second-rate politician into the leadership but he won a big majority for Labour. They are now impotent whisperers and gossipers on the sidelines as our polling numbers collapse. The parliamentary party is already in a state of deep despondency.’
Another MP says it was obvious as soon as Sir Keir became an MP that he was ‘not really a politician’. The MP said: ‘Many of us worked that out straight away from his performance as Corbyn’s Brexit spokesman. He just doesn’t get the politics.’
Morale is low across the party, with many Labour staffers threatening to quit.
A Labour minister said: ‘I wouldn’t say this in public, but I have a new-found respect for the Tories. Government is hard.’
The minister said they recently saw their Shadow counterpart in the Commons and told them this. ‘He replied – I have a new-found respect for you too,
‘I hadn’t realised you have to do it all yourself in opposition,’ referring to the lack of staffing support. All of this has led to jitters among the huge intake of ‘newbie’ MPs elected for the first time in July.
A Labour MP says: ‘We got 10 per cent less of the vote in 2024 than Blair did in 1997. It’s a huge Commons majority, as in 1997, but built on very much less popular support.’
Despite the disillusionment, the split on the Right – the battle between the Tories and Nigel Farage’s Reform – could still give Starmer a second term.
‘There’s a hell of a long way to before the next election but I wouldn’t count on that,’ says one Labour backbencher.
‘If we lose the Muslim vote [over the Gaza war] and Farage takes our white working-class vote, what happens then?’
